Carin P
- Research Program Mentor

MD/PhD candidate at Brown University

Expertise

Neuroscience, genetics, neurodevelopmental disorders, medicine, rare diseases

Bio

Hi! My name is Carin and I'm an MD/PhD candidate at Brown University. For my Neuroscience PhD thesis, I study a rare genetic cause of autism and how mutations in that gene affect brain development. Because it's difficult to study brain development in depth in humans, I use a genetically engineered mouse model to do most of my work. When I finish my graduate degrees, I aspire to be a physician-scientist who sees patients and runs a laboratory doing translational neuroscience research. In my free time, I enjoy doing yoga, hiking, biking, and cooking new vegan recipes! I also love caring for my huge houseplant collection!

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Gene therapy for neurodevelopmental disease

For this project, a student will choose a genetic cause of neurodevelopmental disease and learn about the main symptoms of that condition. They will then research the different types of gene therapies that are currently available and come up with the best plan for using gene therapy to treat that condition. They will describe how the gene therapy could be tested pre-clinically (in cell and animal models) and then clinically in human patients.

Coding skills

Python

Teaching experience

My laboratory ran a summer outreach program for high school students last summer, and I mentored 2 high school students. They both decided to keep doing research with me throughout the year, and I mentored both of them for their high school senior projects. I have also served as an instructor for "Brain Basics," a Summer@Brown course for high school students, for the last 5 years.